I Am The Game's Villain

Chapter 757: [Final Event] [Blood Moon Festival] [39] Amael VS Anox

”Sin of Wrath: Tegmen.”

The words vibrated in my bones.

The Wrath around me compressed, sinking into those lines. Pain exploded—sharp, surgical, cutting straight through tendons and bone; my teeth ground together, jaw shaking. Then, like a blade sliding into its sheath, the agony narrowed into a single, cold thread running along my spine.

My body felt lighter.

Not healed.

Just stripped of unnecessary signals—pain reduced to background noise, fatigue pushed under the surface. Every breath still dragged, but it didn’t matter. My vision sharpened until each droplet of falling blood, each grain of white sand at my feet, each hairline crack in Sirius’s armor stood out with unnatural clarity.

He moved first.

-BOOOOM!!

The ground where he’d been standing exploded. He blurred, a streak of black and amber crossing the distance between us. His sword came down in a vertical arc, black blood howling around it like a pack of starving beasts.

Trinity Nihil snapped up to meet it.

The impact rattled all the way into my shoulders, but my arms held. Wrath particles thickened along the blade, focusing at the point of contact. Black blood surged over his sword, trying to crawl onto mine, to infect, to chew its way up toward my hands.

Wrath reacted like starving leeches.

They ate it.

The black blood touching my edge simply... unraveled. It didn’t burn. It didn’t explode. It broke apart into nothing, dissolving into dust the moment it touched the dense band of Wrath clinging to Trinity Nihil. Sirius’s armored helm tilted a fraction.

I shoved him.

His massive frame slid back a step, boots carving furrows in the blood-slicked stone. I didn’t wait. Tegmen pushed my body forward before the thought fully formed; I flashed after him, legs screaming, wounds tugging, ignored. My blade swung in a tight, brutal arc aimed at his neck.

He pivoted.

-BAM!!

His forearm—coated in that churning black armor—slammed into Trinity Nihil, knocking the strike aside. The impact numbed my fingers; the hilt bit into my palm hard enough to split skin. Warm blood trickled down the handle.

He countered with a backhanded swing that came from nowhere, the black sword carving a crescent of annihilation toward my ribs. Wrath spun, particles shifting like a school of vicious fish; I dropped low, the blade passing over my head, the air itself wilting where it cut.

I saw amber light flaring then.

Dozens of weapons materialized at arm’s length.

I twisted Trinity Nihil, angling the flat toward a fractured piece of polished stone half-buried at my feet.

”Anathemas Fire.”

A concentrated burst of purple flame detonated from the blade and slammed into the shard. The surface flashed—smooth, mirror-bright for a heartbeat.

And I was gone.

The world bent sideways. My stomach lurched as my body broke into a smear of purple light and vanished into the reflection lighting fast, faster than it should have normally.

Sirius’s amber weapons fired.

-BOOOOOM!! -BOOOOOM!! -BOOOOOM!!

The spot where I’d been standing a second ago turned into a storm of amber shrapnel and pulverized stone. Black blood geysered as the weapons tore holes through his own churning sea. The shockwave punched through the air, hot and sharp.

I stepped out of a cracked shop window behind him.

I found myself hundreds meters away, quite destroyed already.

Glass had no right to be a mirror, not in this ruined state—but Anathemas Fire still clung to Trinity Nihil, and wherever it passed, surfaces reflected just enough for me to slip through. My body slid from the glass like shadow peeling off reality.

Wrath already coiled around my arm.

-BAM!!

My fist slammed into the side of his helm.

Bone-like black armor cracked. The impact shot a spike of pain up my already mangled wrist, but Sirius’s head rocked sideways, his stance shifting half a step. Wrath particles around my knuckles drilled into the armor, eating microscopic tunnels into it, widening fractures.

He reacted soon.

A wave of black blood erupted from his back like wings, each feather a needle-sharp spike. They shot toward me point-first.

”...!”

White sand burst from my feet, thin as dust and bright as starlight. For an instant, I wasn’t there—just streaks of pale motes sliding along the angle of his attack, slipping through the narrow gaps between lances of black blood. They screamed past, perforating the building behind where I’d been, filling it with a forest of skewers.

I reformed above him in white sands after using Fate.

Air tore at my wounds; my side burned white-hot. I dragged Trinity Nihil up with both hands.

”Come!” Sirius shouted with a wide smile.

”Sin of Wrath.”

Wrath particles clustered along the blade, dense enough that no white remained on the blade or hilt. Below, Sirius raised his sword, black blood spiraling up it like a maelstrom.

-BOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!

The shockwave tore the sky again.

Purple destruction and black blood tore at each other, neither quite flame nor liquid. Where Wrath touched black blood, it ate its edge, stripping away layers, thinning it; where black blood pushed deeper, it slowed the gnawing advance of my particles, dampening them, muting their hunger.

”...Ugrghh!!!”

My arms screamed.

Tegmen dulled the pain, but it didn’t erase the strain. Bones vibrated. Tendons burned. My fingers felt like they were about to dislocate trying to keep hold of Trinity Nihil’s hilt.

We hit the ground hard, still locked.

The ground cratered under our feet, stone pulverized into dust over thirty meters radius. Civilians still caught in the spell fell into the depression, tumbling around us like broken dolls. Some slammed into my back, my legs; I felt bones crack under my boots as I shoved forward, using their bodies as footing, as leverage.

Sirius responded with brute force.

Black blood surged up from the crater’s edges, forming massive tendrils that whipped toward my ribs and throat. Amber weapons reappeared, this time skewering through the tendrils themselves, riding inside them like barbed spines, giving them piercing tips.

They came in from both sides.

I ripped Trinity Nihil free and let myself fall backward, spine bowing.

Anathemas Fire burst from my free hand, splashing across a fragment of broken pillar half-buried in the rubble. Its surface flashed purple-silver glass—and my body vanished into it just as the tendrils crashed down where I’d been. The impact obliterated the ground, black and gold tearing trenches through the field.

I dropped out of another mirror a heartbeat later—this time, a blood-slick puddle that briefly reflected the warped sky as my fire crawled across its surface. My stomach screamed again; my side flared with renewed agony, hot and cold at once. This new way of using mirrors pulled at something deep inside, a thread that felt very close to snapping.

But I hadn’t time to dwell on it.

I appeared right beside Sirius’s left flank, Trinity Nihil already in motion.

The first cut took his arm at the elbow.

-SPURT!!

Armor split. Black blood exploded in a pressurized spray—but the Wrath on my blade sliced straight through the liquid too, carving a clean path that refused to be clogged. His forearm spun away, sword still in hand, fingers frozen around the hilt.

The second cut went for his neck.

He ducked.

The black armor on his helm grazed the edge. Wrath particles swarmed, eating into it like acid without heat. Chunks fell away, revealing an eye blazing with something very close to excitement under the carnage.

One of his amber spears punched into my thigh.

-Spurt!

”Ughhh—!”

The point burst out the back of my leg, white-hot shock turning everything below the hip into static. My breath locked. For a moment, the world narrowed to that single intrusive spike, the way it ground against bone, the warmth of blood pouring down my calf.

I drove my forehead into his face.

-BAM!!

His head snapped back. Bone crunched—his, not mine. Wrath flickered around my skull, dulling the worst of the impact.

The spear in my leg twisted, trying to tear a wider path. I grabbed the shaft with one hand, Wrath flaring around my fingers; the amber construct cracked, then shattered, the fragments devoured mid-air as the particles ripped it apart.

Pain followed as soon as the tip pulled free.

My leg buckled. Tegmen once again caught me, smothering the urge to scream into a heavy numbness. The muscle still spasmed, and every step would be a grind of agony, but I could move.

Damn it...

That was enough.

Above us, the last black pillar pulsed, thicker and darker than the others had been, feeding the trembling remnants of the dome. Threads of corruption streamed from it into Sirius’s armor, reinforcing cracks, patching wounds as fast as I opened them.

That had to go.

Sirius realized my focus a split second after I moved.

I launched myself toward the base of the pillar, dragging my bad leg like dead weight. Every impact sent another shock through my thigh, but Wrath kept my stride from collapsing completely. Sirius’s remaining arm swept out. Black blood rose in a wall, a tidal wave rushing in to cut me off.

I didn’t stop either.

”Anathemas Fire.”

Purple flames roared from Trinity Nihil, not in a wide blast this time, but in a narrow, sharpened beam. It drilled straight into the oncoming wall, punching a hole clean through. The fire clung to the inner surface of the tunnel, turning it into a blazing throat of purple.

I dove into it.

Heat blazed on my skin. The edges of my cloak charred, curled, and crumbled into ash. My wounds screamed as sweat and blood boiled against them. The smell of my own flesh burning pushed at the back of my mind.

I ground it down and emerged from the other side.

The pillar towered in front of me, its surface heaving and throbbing. Up close, I could see faces in it—half-formed, twisted, rising and sinking back into the black sludge. Mouths opened and closed in silent wails. Hands pushed out, fingers splayed, then dissolved back into the mass.

I froze for a moment.

Hallucination maybe, I didn’t know, I just looked it as if I had lost conscious for a split of second.

That could have been exhaustion as well.

Sirius hit me from behind right at that time.

-BAM!!

The tackle drove the air out of my lungs. His armored shoulder slammed between my shoulder blades, launching me forward. I met the pillar with my chest first, the impact cracking something inside; a sharp, wet pop rang through my body, and for a moment the world tilted sideways.

Black blood rose around us, closing like a fist.

It tried to swallow me, to pin me to the pillar and crush me between two moving walls. The pressure was instant, suffocating, trying to ram itself into my nose, my mouth, my eyes.

I just wanted to close my eyes forever but...

Ephera’s face flashed in my head, some memory I wasn’t even aware of.

”I will be waiting for you, Nyr.”

”ARGHHH!!!””

My particles raged outward, no longer a sheath but a spiked halo. Everywhere they touched the oncoming black blood, turning from thick, crushing liquid into fine, harmless dust that scattered on some invisible wind.

Sirius’s armor buckled where we were pressed together. Wrath chewed into the plates at my back, eating them layer by layer until I felt his weight directly, the heat of his breath, the rhythm of whatever passed for a heartbeat inside that shell.

I twisted around.

My bad leg screamed as I forced it to pivot, using the pillar as leverage. Sirius’s momentum kept pushing; I redirected it.

White sand burst from beneath my feet in a tight spiral, boosting the spin along. It didn’t form any solid shape, just a rotating current that let me slip around his center of mass. And combined with Amunet’s hands...

Our positions flipped in an instant.

Now his back hit the pillar.

”AGHHH!!” He gasped out.

-BOOOOOOM!!

The entire structure shook.

Cracks rippled up its length, jagged white lines racing toward the trembling dome overhead. Black blood sprayed in all directions, thrown free by the impact, only to be eaten mid-air where it brushed against Wrath vibrating off my skin.

I didn’t give him time to recover.

Both hands closed around Trinity Nihil.

The purple marks covering my body pulsed in unison, pouring everything left into the blade—Wrath thickening until the sword’s edge vanished entirely under a seething band of destructive particles. My arms felt hollow, like they were no longer mine, like I was just watching them move from very far away.

”Sin of Wrath...”

I dragged the blade back.

The pillar in front of us convulsed, faces screaming without sound.

”...Tegmen Break.”

I brought Trinity Nihil down.

-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!

The Wrath didn’t explode outward. It imploded. The instant the edge touched the pillar, the particles burrowed inside, spreading through the entire structure faster than thought, devouring every line of power, every strand of blood, from the core out. The column didn’t shatter—it disintegrated.

One moment, a tower of black corruption loomed over us.

The next, it was dust.

The red dome above us screamed. A web of fractures shattered across its surface, then it collapsed entirely, ripping apart into tatters of bleeding light that blew away on a wind that didn’t exist moments ago.

The backblast caught Sirius.

With the pillar gone, nothing anchored the flood of black blood still binding his armor. Wrath surged through it from the inside. His armor burst in several places at once; vents of pressurized corruption blew outward like ruptured arteries.

-BAM!!

The force hurled him away from me.

-BOOOOOOM!!!

”...UGHHKk!”

He shot across the ground like a thrown boulder, trailing black blood and shards of his own armor. His body smashed into the ground hard enough to carve a trench through what remained of the stone, skidding, bouncing, throwing up a storm of dust and blood before finally coming to rest amidst the ruins of a toppled archway.

My arms hung numb at my sides.

Every breath was a knife again. The numb tunnel around my body of Tegmen flickered; pain seeped through cracks in the dam, surging back into awareness. My vision blurred, then cleared in jerky pulses as I forced my lungs to keep working.

Not done.

Not yet.

I kicked off the ground.

Purple particles flared along my legs, giving each step a brutal, jerking acceleration. The world blurred. In one heartbeat, the distance between us was a ravaged battlefield. In the next, I was above him, Trinity Nihil raised high in both trembling hands.

Black blood crawled up from the crater around his body, reacting on instinct. It climbed into the air in a dome, layering itself into a barrier, thick upon thick, an armored shell between my descending blade and his chest.

”Sin of Wrath.”

The words tore out of my raw throat.

Wrath roared down the length of Trinity Nihil in answer, gathering at the point. .

I plunged the sword down.

-CRAAAAASH!!!

The tip hit the blood barrier first.

For a fraction of a second, it resisted. Black liquid hardened, layers compressing, trying to become an unbreakable wall.

Then the particles bit.

Wrath chewed through the barrier like it was rotted paper. The first layer vanished. The second followed. The third tried to hold, to thicken, to reinforce with more and more corrupted blood, but every extra drop only fed the destruction.

The dome caved inward.

Trinity Nihil punched through.

The remaining layers peeled back around the blade, eaten away even as they tried to close. I felt almost no resistance when the sword finally met flesh on the other side.

It slid into his chest.

”....UUUGHH!!!!”

A wet, heavy sound echoed in the ruined place as steel and Wrath sank through armor, through bone, through whatever passed for Sirius’s heart. Black blood erupted around the wound, trying to flood it, to vomit the blade back out—but the particles were already there, drilling deeper, carving channels of nothingness inside him.

I groaned, controlled, my hands still locked on the hilt, knuckles bleeding.

”Stay down,” I whispered.

And drove Trinity Nihil the rest of the way through.

”...!”

Sirius’s eyes snapped wide.

”AGHHHHH!!!”

His scream rang loudly around.

I twisted the sword deeper.

His whole body jerked violently. His fingers dug into my arm—nails scraping against my skin, desperate, trembling—but I didn’t budge. My expression stayed cold, my amber eyes fixed on him without the slightest flicker of hesitation.

His grip weakened.

Then finally, his arm dropped limply to his side.

”Ghh—!” He coughed another mouthful of blood, staining the blade and his clothes. Only then did the black blood swirling around him begin to dissipate and fall lifelessly to the ground.

A long, heavy silence settled over us.

”Are you done now?” I asked, my voice devoid of anything resembling warmth.

Sirius lifted his head slowly. His hair faded back to its natural blond, and the black sclera of his eyes retreated, returning to normal. He looked strangely human again—fragile, almost.

He wheezed, trying to breathe, then gave me a faint, broken smile.

”A—Agh...” He tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come easily. His throat sounded like it was filled with shards of glass.

I didn’t pull the sword out.

Not yet.

Not until I was absolutely certain he was dead.

I wasn’t repeating the same mistake as with Cyril.

”Let me ask you something,” I said quietly.

His fading gaze lifted to mine, pupils slowly losing life.

”Was any of it real?”

It was a simple question. But he knew exactly what I meant.

Everything he’d done.

Everything he’d shown me, to everyone.

The concern for his family.

The rare, brotherly love toward Alicia.

His love for Sephira.

His ’humanity’... or the illusion of it.

”You did that to Sephira, didn’t you?” I asked. ”She fought me completely out of her mind.”

Sirius struggled to form words.

”S–She... found out...”

”You could’ve killed her,” I said. ”But you didn’t. Instead, you sent her to me.”

”You... could have killed her,” he retorted back.

”You knew I wouldn’t.”

He let out a thin, painful chuckle.

”Ah... aha... are you trying to find some kind of meaning behind what I did, Samael?”

”I don’t need a reason to kill someone who threatens the people I love.”

My eyes were dry as a desert. Nothing inside me stirred.

He stared up at me quietly, searching my face.

”You sound like Samael Eveningstar... in a way,” he whispered.

His remaining hand—the only one he could still move—lifted weakly toward my arm. I didn’t pull away and just watched.

”You remember what you told me... Mael... back then...” His gaze drifted upward, toward the dim sky. A single tear—black as ink, or maybe just blood—slid down the side of his face.

I didn’t reply since I had no idea what he was referring to.

He gave a faint, broken laugh.

”You were right... Connor was too, maybe. Both of you figured me out... and still...” He smiled faintly, painfully. ”...still reached out to me.”

”...”

He fell silent for a moment. His breath grew slower, weaker.

Maybe I should’ve felt something. Anger. Sorrow. Victory. Regret.

But I just stood there, exhausted... or maybe waiting. Waiting to hear the end of what he had to say.

Because he wasn’t like Cyril.

”You asked me... about Alicia... and Sephira...” Hee whispered, his eyes still aimed at the sky, pupils unfocused. I couldn’t tell if he still saw anything at all.

”It... it was real. All of it. Viessa too...” His breath trembled. ”More than my own ’kin’.”

”I noticed,” I answered curtly.

Sirius tried to smile one last time, but instead he choked on a thick gush of blood.

He gritted his teeth and forced his trembling hand to clutch the torn sleeve of my shirt, dragging himself upward just enough to lift his head. The movement alone looked like agony.

”A... Nox...” He said. ”My mother... be careful. And... Lucifer—”

His bleeding eyes locked with mine, clouding over.

”You... you have to be.... He—He has been—”

He couldn’t finish aloud. Instead he pulled me closer, lips brushing near my ear as he whispered the last fragment of truth he had left.

”...!”

My eyes widened.

The world seemed to tilt for a moment at what he said.

But I didn’t even have time to ask him anything.

His grip loosened.

His body collapsed backward with a dull thud.

His head rolled slightly to the side as blood trailed down the corner of his mouth.

Just like that... he was gone.

”...”

I stared at him in silence for a few seconds. Then I crouched down and gently closed his eyes with my fingertips.

With a slow breathing, I pushed myself back to my feet. A small grunt slipped out of me—exhaustion, pain, or maybe just the weight of all of that had happened settling on my tired shoulders.

I lifted my gaze.

The thick red dome that had covered the sky was gone, finally dissipated. But the mana circle of the blood moon spell still flickered faintly above, unstable and struggling to maintain its hold on reality.

It needed to be completely erased.

Something weak hit my back at that moment.

I turned around.

A small girl—no older than five—was punching me with tiny, trembling fists. Her eyes glowed a bright crimson, fully under the blood moon’s control. Strange, broken sounds slipped from her mouth as she continued hitting me with the strength of a dying butterfly.

I let her keep going for a moment.

Then I slowly placed my hand on her head and stroked her hair.

Her small shoulders shook.

A single red tear slid down my cheek.

A soft silver glow gathered in my palm then.

Her body relaxed instantly, going limp in my arms. Not a scream. Not a tremble. Just... peaceful death, the only mercy I could give her.

Carefully, I lowered her to the ground and laid her down as gently as I could.

Then I pulled Trinity Nihil free from Sirius’s corpse.

”S–Saya?”

I lifted my head.

A boy stood a few steps away—maybe ten years old, maybe younger. His voice cracked when he saw the girl at my feet.

He ran toward her with panicked steps.

”Saya, I told you not to leave! How did you—how did you break the restraints? M—Mom’s a bit late but she’ll bring a healer, okay? She’ll fix you, just—just wait—”

He went on his knees and placed his hands on her shoulders, shaking her gently.

But she didn’t breathe.

She didn’t move.

”S–Saya...? Hey! Saya! Answer me!!”

His voice broke into sharp, terrified sobs.

”She is dead,” I said quietly.

He froze.

Then he turned his tear-filled eyes toward me, disbelief choking him.

”W—What...?”

”Your sister is dead.”

”N–No... no, she... she’s just sleeping, she’s—”

He hugged her tightly, rocking her small body as tears streamed down his face.

”Please answer me... please... Saya!!! Please wake up...!”

Then he lunged at me.

”Y-You did this?!” He screamed.

I looked down at him.

His tiny fists pounded weakly against my chest, each hit accompanied by a choked sob.

I opened my mouth.

What kind of miserable lie or excuse... could I possibly offer him?

None.

”Yes,” I said.

”...!”

He flinched widened his eyes. Tears poured down his cheeks uncontrollably as he kept hitting me, over and over, his voice raw.

”W—Why?! Whyyy?! Why did you do that?! Why did you kill Saya?!! WHYYYY!!!”

I didn’t stop him.

I just let him cry.

Let him scream.

Let his grief spill out into the ruined air around us.

”Edward...”

I lifted my head.

Jayden was standing there—and he wasn’t alone.